and it made the same stupid mistake that Super 8 made in its shonky ending. I DON'T WANT TO SEE INSIDE THE SHIP if you don't know how to end the bloody movie. That's not an exciting thing that needs to happen if the story's pretty much over with. It's like, "uh guys we've still got 20 minutes of movie left to fill in, whaddya wanna do? I dunno. Show em inside the ship maybe?" So dumb.

I don't quite get this...? Super 8 never showed us the inside of the ship (since SPOILER! SPOILER! it literally ended with the ship being put together and flying away). The alien itself was only properly shown in the finale though, but that was necessary to establish the connection between it and the kid (since SPOILER! the big theme in the movie was forgiveness, and the connection between helped the alien to forgive the human race and move on), because in the end Super 8 wasn't a horror movie but an E.T. variation. I agree with your point in general, but I don't see how Super 8 is an example.

the most unrealistic part of this movie is that MacReady would waste both good liquor and his only friend/source of entertainment in the opening. although maybe he has a huge stockpile of booze and back-up Chess Wizard computers in his shack, wouldn't put it past him.

childs is such a fascinating and singular character. definitely holding the place of the "#2" in the film and meant to be on par w/macready in strength and conviction and technically an ally in the "action film" sense but also spending much of the film diametrically opposed to macready and his theories. i recognize this stems from the crushing paranoia of the film but in probably most other hands childs would be macready's bff and would stand fast with him every step of the way, and also he'd probably die 2/3rds of the way in.

did the 'stoned/ hippie-ish/ paranoid-conspiracy guy with messy hair invariably wearing denim and maybe headphones' stereotype begin with this film? seems that character is in loads of sci-fi films after; notably The Abyss, Minority Report, the Solaris remake etc. is there a word for this 'type'? there should be. they all have shades of Oddball from Kelly's Heroes i suppose.